A blog is born...
Well...
You can't click on anything these days without reading something about blogs, so I figured I may as well join the legions of people who write about stupid shit in the desperate hopes that someone, somewhere actually cares.
Should someone actually be reading this, please note that this blog will be rife with profanity, as my mind is unfortunately full of curses. One might suggest that it was ingrained in me as a child, my father being a very Blue-Collar kinda guy and a true artisan of vulgarity. I would like to note, however, that I didn't begin cursing until the approximate age of 15, and it was a completely conscious decision. I suppose I felt it would add a little more fucking color to my language, and in a way it has. Still, I sometimes find it difficult to edit my vocabulary as company or location might dictate. This being my own damn blog, I feel free to say whatever the fuckity-fucking-fuck I want, particularly since I expect nobody will ever read this.
Truth be told, I fully expect to make another entry or two and grow bored with it, seeing as how I have several notebooks that were started as "journals", but were quickly relegated to various boxes in my basement, never to be seen again in my lifetime. I imagine that one day some family member may stumble across them while sorting through my personal junk after something manages to kill me... That person may well read these journals and wonder just how I managed to stay alive as long as I did. Anyway, I doubt this thing will amount to much, and I can't imagine who's going to want to read it.
Anyway, I decided to go back to college a few months ago following an industrial accident that left me with a minor-but-unpleasant scar on my face and subsequent downsizing from the job that caused said scar... At the age of 31, I've finally decided that I'm tired of being a failure and am ready to start doing something about improving my situation. I won't go so far as to say that I've decided to grow up, because I doubt I'm ever going to be ready for that, but I'm at least ready to make some grown-up money without putting myself in mortal danger. To do that, I'm afraid the world has decided that I need an expensive piece of paper that proclaims my worth to the world.
Enter Penn State University. I'll be resuming my studies there in only four days and am looking forward to it with a mixture of apprehension and muted enthusiasm. I am, after all, 31 years old.
I began my college career at East Carolina University (that's in NC, in case you were wondering... There is no East Carolina in this dimension) back in 1992. At the time, I really needed to get away from my parents, who were wrongfully avoiding divorce and making us all miserable in the process. I went to ECU for a year, but missed my friends terribly. Over Christmas break, I stupidly felt right back at home, since all my friends were around doing holiday stuff. It was just like old times, and I missed it. I decided to transfer my credits to the local Penn State campus and return home. In retrospect, it was one of the dumbest things I've ever done. Had I stayed at ECU, I could have graduated in three years, having placed out of about a year's worth of credits.
Unfortunately, I boldly (boldly=foolishly)decided to experiment a little with my course selections, taking both a high level Spanish course and a low level Russian course. The Spanish class was actually not a bad idea, just a bad class. During drop/add, two native speakers dropped out because they thought it was too hard, and the professor turned out to be a bit of a bastard. I don't think anyone in my whole class got better than a "C" by the end of the semester, and I earned my very first scholastic "D", having been an "A/B" Spanish student in high school. Russian, on the other hand, was pure stupidity. I wasn't prepared for the extremely, ummm... Foreign nature of a slavic language and suffered accordingly. I didn't really study at all, never went to the language lab, and just barely managed to get a "D" in that class as well. I did pretty well in everything else, actually getting into the ECU honors program.
Unfortunately, when I decided to transfer, I pretty much fucked myself. Spanish and Russian credits didn't transfer on the poor grades. Some other stuff didn't transfer for other reasons. The end result was that I basically wiped away a semester's worth of credits, and that was on top of screwing myself out of a free year of placement credits. So I begain PSU with low morale and a lousy GPA...
When I got to PSU, my advisor took a look at my transcript, noticed that I would be working a part-time job, and proceeded to counsel me into a coma. She pretty much laughed at my request to join the honors program, despite excellent marks in my chosen field of English. I wound up taking a bunch of classes that bored me to tears and didn't really challenge me. I felt like I was back in 11th grade and was pissed that I was paying so much for it. Frustrated at the state of things, I decided to drop out and work full-time for awhile, deluding myself that I would save some money and go back to a "real" school in a year or two.
Well, as a wise man once said, Shit Happens... I wound up getting a full-time job, buying a new car that had to be financed, moving in with a girl, blahblahblah. Life decided to sucker-punch me away from school for awhile, and by the time I decided that I wanted to go back, my parents were split up and didn't want any part of paying for college.
Now, I know what you're thinking... "Lots of kids pay their own way through school, you spoiled prick." You know what? You're right, but I was getting the biggest student loans I could for the schooling I DID get, while most of my friends got free rides from Mommy and Daddy. Anyway, as it turns out, I'll now have to pay for it all myself anyway, it just took me a long time to get around to it.
You see, the accident I mentioned a few hundred words ago left me with a scar on my upper lip. While unfortunate (and at the time very painful and emotionally troubling), the fact that I have a visible scar on my face allows me to claim some Workman's Compensation benefits. While I haven't received Dime One so far, my lawyer has asked for one year's worth of wages as compensation for the scar. Should that award come to pass, I'll actually do pretty well. (The lawyer makes out like a fucking bandit, by the way. He'll get 20% of whatever the award winds up being for doing a little basic paperwork. I expect that he'll make somewhere between 4-8K for that. I think I chose the wrong field...)
Anyway, while I do plan to piss some of that loot away on the next wave of video game consoles, maybe a new guitar, maybe a decent vacation, some dentistry (Yay!), I'm going to try very hard to keep a good deal set aside to finance the next few years of college. I expect I have about three full years ahead of me to graduate, but I'm committed this time to getting that stupid degree.
I'm tired of working shitty jobs for shitty money. I've worked at so many places, I can't even remember all the jobs I've had... Here is what I can remember doing, starting with the most recent and working back...
Industrial laborer, Reading Truck Body- This is the gig that landed me the scar on my lip. I got it when a jumper cable I was pulling popped loose and slammed me full force in the face, puncturing my lip and loosening three of my teeth. I did a range of things at this place; undercoating, assembly, sanding truck bodies, you name it. While it had it's sweaty, filty charms, it really wasn't for me. I got the job because I was tired of my previous gig and my little brother works there to this day. The money was pretty good for a guy with no degree, but it took its toll physically.
Customer service punching bag, XO Communications- This was a telecom reseller that dealt strictly with business clients, and poorly at that. I was only here for about nine months of pure hell before I got the job at Reading Body. I left on a Wednesday afternoon at lunchtime, leaving my photo ID badge (complete with "I QUIT!" speech bubble) in my cleaned-out cubicle with the words "Welcome to Hell" burning in flaming text on my computer screen. For eight hours a day I sat on the phone while justifiably pissed off customers screamed at me about how horrible our company was. I just couldn't take the way things were being run and the way I couldn't do anything about it, so I quit.
Salesman, AT&T Wireless- I sold cellphones. When I started doing it, the company was actually still called Cellular One and still sold analog phone service. The company was bought by AT&T the day I started working there, I think. I got sick of doing managerial tasks that didn't pay me anything due to the commission pay structure. Plus, they made a habit of fucking us on the commissions, regulary making changes to our pay retroactively. (How legal is that, by the way? You tell us we'll be paid X if we do Y, but then two days before the cycle ends, you change the pay retroactively to the beginning so that it's really X divided by three?)I quit this job after almost two years, then got rehired later for about another year before I quit again.
Retail Manager, TSR Wireless- This joint started out selling strictly pagers. You know, back when cell phones were obscenely expensive and everyone instead wore pagers. I actually quit this job and was rehired not once, but twice. It looks pretty bizarre on a resume, I can tell you. They eventually branched out into reselling walkie talkies and cell phones and crap, but I got pissed off for good and quit that gig too.
Theater Manager, Motion Picture Entertainment- I managed a second run movie theater for about six months, one of those places that shows movies that are a little older for a buck a ticket. I used to work for another theater as a projectionist, so I knew my way around. The main problem here was that I thought the money wasn't good enough for the job. When it came time for my review and raise, I decided to go back to my phone gig.
Disc Jockey, WRFY, Clear Channel Radio- This is one of the cooler things that I've done, and my only real claim to obscure fame. I was a part-time air jock on the mainstream rock station in my shitty little town for a little over a year, but I was working three other jobs at the same time and it just became too much to handle. The money here was the worst of the four gigs, so it got the boot. A year later I was rehired, but quit after about five months because I was tired of all the office drama and bullshit that came with it. I quit on-air at the end of my shift, thereby burning that bridge forever. (I do, however, enjoy making a dramatic exit from a job.)
Mobile DJ, The Party People- I still do this right now, actually. It's the only job I've had for about the past six months, though I've been with this outfit for probably four or five years. It's a relatively easy way to make some decent money, and I've done a lot worse for a lot less. I used to do a karaoke show at the local Sheraton hotel for these guys... It helped train me for my current position in my rock band.
Well, I'm actually a little tired of going through my work history here, and nobody really cares. Most jobs have been retail or retail related, though I actually did a mystery-diner/reviewer thing for about a year.
Anyway, the point is that I'm tired of these shitty jobs and want to do something respectable from here on out. I want to be able to talk about my job and my life with pride, not feel like I have to look away and defend where I am and how I got there. The time has come to get my shit together and try to be what I've always believed I can be. If I fail now, I guess I'll just have to resign myself to a life of mind-numbing mediocrity. Truthfully, I think I'd rather be dead, so I guess I'll have to just get my shit together and kick some fucking ass.
Don't try to stop me, or I'll knock you the fuck out.
Check back and see if I continue to do this... I might be as surprised as you.
You can't click on anything these days without reading something about blogs, so I figured I may as well join the legions of people who write about stupid shit in the desperate hopes that someone, somewhere actually cares.
Should someone actually be reading this, please note that this blog will be rife with profanity, as my mind is unfortunately full of curses. One might suggest that it was ingrained in me as a child, my father being a very Blue-Collar kinda guy and a true artisan of vulgarity. I would like to note, however, that I didn't begin cursing until the approximate age of 15, and it was a completely conscious decision. I suppose I felt it would add a little more fucking color to my language, and in a way it has. Still, I sometimes find it difficult to edit my vocabulary as company or location might dictate. This being my own damn blog, I feel free to say whatever the fuckity-fucking-fuck I want, particularly since I expect nobody will ever read this.
Truth be told, I fully expect to make another entry or two and grow bored with it, seeing as how I have several notebooks that were started as "journals", but were quickly relegated to various boxes in my basement, never to be seen again in my lifetime. I imagine that one day some family member may stumble across them while sorting through my personal junk after something manages to kill me... That person may well read these journals and wonder just how I managed to stay alive as long as I did. Anyway, I doubt this thing will amount to much, and I can't imagine who's going to want to read it.
Anyway, I decided to go back to college a few months ago following an industrial accident that left me with a minor-but-unpleasant scar on my face and subsequent downsizing from the job that caused said scar... At the age of 31, I've finally decided that I'm tired of being a failure and am ready to start doing something about improving my situation. I won't go so far as to say that I've decided to grow up, because I doubt I'm ever going to be ready for that, but I'm at least ready to make some grown-up money without putting myself in mortal danger. To do that, I'm afraid the world has decided that I need an expensive piece of paper that proclaims my worth to the world.
Enter Penn State University. I'll be resuming my studies there in only four days and am looking forward to it with a mixture of apprehension and muted enthusiasm. I am, after all, 31 years old.
I began my college career at East Carolina University (that's in NC, in case you were wondering... There is no East Carolina in this dimension) back in 1992. At the time, I really needed to get away from my parents, who were wrongfully avoiding divorce and making us all miserable in the process. I went to ECU for a year, but missed my friends terribly. Over Christmas break, I stupidly felt right back at home, since all my friends were around doing holiday stuff. It was just like old times, and I missed it. I decided to transfer my credits to the local Penn State campus and return home. In retrospect, it was one of the dumbest things I've ever done. Had I stayed at ECU, I could have graduated in three years, having placed out of about a year's worth of credits.
Unfortunately, I boldly (boldly=foolishly)decided to experiment a little with my course selections, taking both a high level Spanish course and a low level Russian course. The Spanish class was actually not a bad idea, just a bad class. During drop/add, two native speakers dropped out because they thought it was too hard, and the professor turned out to be a bit of a bastard. I don't think anyone in my whole class got better than a "C" by the end of the semester, and I earned my very first scholastic "D", having been an "A/B" Spanish student in high school. Russian, on the other hand, was pure stupidity. I wasn't prepared for the extremely, ummm... Foreign nature of a slavic language and suffered accordingly. I didn't really study at all, never went to the language lab, and just barely managed to get a "D" in that class as well. I did pretty well in everything else, actually getting into the ECU honors program.
Unfortunately, when I decided to transfer, I pretty much fucked myself. Spanish and Russian credits didn't transfer on the poor grades. Some other stuff didn't transfer for other reasons. The end result was that I basically wiped away a semester's worth of credits, and that was on top of screwing myself out of a free year of placement credits. So I begain PSU with low morale and a lousy GPA...
When I got to PSU, my advisor took a look at my transcript, noticed that I would be working a part-time job, and proceeded to counsel me into a coma. She pretty much laughed at my request to join the honors program, despite excellent marks in my chosen field of English. I wound up taking a bunch of classes that bored me to tears and didn't really challenge me. I felt like I was back in 11th grade and was pissed that I was paying so much for it. Frustrated at the state of things, I decided to drop out and work full-time for awhile, deluding myself that I would save some money and go back to a "real" school in a year or two.
Well, as a wise man once said, Shit Happens... I wound up getting a full-time job, buying a new car that had to be financed, moving in with a girl, blahblahblah. Life decided to sucker-punch me away from school for awhile, and by the time I decided that I wanted to go back, my parents were split up and didn't want any part of paying for college.
Now, I know what you're thinking... "Lots of kids pay their own way through school, you spoiled prick." You know what? You're right, but I was getting the biggest student loans I could for the schooling I DID get, while most of my friends got free rides from Mommy and Daddy. Anyway, as it turns out, I'll now have to pay for it all myself anyway, it just took me a long time to get around to it.
You see, the accident I mentioned a few hundred words ago left me with a scar on my upper lip. While unfortunate (and at the time very painful and emotionally troubling), the fact that I have a visible scar on my face allows me to claim some Workman's Compensation benefits. While I haven't received Dime One so far, my lawyer has asked for one year's worth of wages as compensation for the scar. Should that award come to pass, I'll actually do pretty well. (The lawyer makes out like a fucking bandit, by the way. He'll get 20% of whatever the award winds up being for doing a little basic paperwork. I expect that he'll make somewhere between 4-8K for that. I think I chose the wrong field...)
Anyway, while I do plan to piss some of that loot away on the next wave of video game consoles, maybe a new guitar, maybe a decent vacation, some dentistry (Yay!), I'm going to try very hard to keep a good deal set aside to finance the next few years of college. I expect I have about three full years ahead of me to graduate, but I'm committed this time to getting that stupid degree.
I'm tired of working shitty jobs for shitty money. I've worked at so many places, I can't even remember all the jobs I've had... Here is what I can remember doing, starting with the most recent and working back...
Industrial laborer, Reading Truck Body- This is the gig that landed me the scar on my lip. I got it when a jumper cable I was pulling popped loose and slammed me full force in the face, puncturing my lip and loosening three of my teeth. I did a range of things at this place; undercoating, assembly, sanding truck bodies, you name it. While it had it's sweaty, filty charms, it really wasn't for me. I got the job because I was tired of my previous gig and my little brother works there to this day. The money was pretty good for a guy with no degree, but it took its toll physically.
Customer service punching bag, XO Communications- This was a telecom reseller that dealt strictly with business clients, and poorly at that. I was only here for about nine months of pure hell before I got the job at Reading Body. I left on a Wednesday afternoon at lunchtime, leaving my photo ID badge (complete with "I QUIT!" speech bubble) in my cleaned-out cubicle with the words "Welcome to Hell" burning in flaming text on my computer screen. For eight hours a day I sat on the phone while justifiably pissed off customers screamed at me about how horrible our company was. I just couldn't take the way things were being run and the way I couldn't do anything about it, so I quit.
Salesman, AT&T Wireless- I sold cellphones. When I started doing it, the company was actually still called Cellular One and still sold analog phone service. The company was bought by AT&T the day I started working there, I think. I got sick of doing managerial tasks that didn't pay me anything due to the commission pay structure. Plus, they made a habit of fucking us on the commissions, regulary making changes to our pay retroactively. (How legal is that, by the way? You tell us we'll be paid X if we do Y, but then two days before the cycle ends, you change the pay retroactively to the beginning so that it's really X divided by three?)I quit this job after almost two years, then got rehired later for about another year before I quit again.
Retail Manager, TSR Wireless- This joint started out selling strictly pagers. You know, back when cell phones were obscenely expensive and everyone instead wore pagers. I actually quit this job and was rehired not once, but twice. It looks pretty bizarre on a resume, I can tell you. They eventually branched out into reselling walkie talkies and cell phones and crap, but I got pissed off for good and quit that gig too.
Theater Manager, Motion Picture Entertainment- I managed a second run movie theater for about six months, one of those places that shows movies that are a little older for a buck a ticket. I used to work for another theater as a projectionist, so I knew my way around. The main problem here was that I thought the money wasn't good enough for the job. When it came time for my review and raise, I decided to go back to my phone gig.
Disc Jockey, WRFY, Clear Channel Radio- This is one of the cooler things that I've done, and my only real claim to obscure fame. I was a part-time air jock on the mainstream rock station in my shitty little town for a little over a year, but I was working three other jobs at the same time and it just became too much to handle. The money here was the worst of the four gigs, so it got the boot. A year later I was rehired, but quit after about five months because I was tired of all the office drama and bullshit that came with it. I quit on-air at the end of my shift, thereby burning that bridge forever. (I do, however, enjoy making a dramatic exit from a job.)
Mobile DJ, The Party People- I still do this right now, actually. It's the only job I've had for about the past six months, though I've been with this outfit for probably four or five years. It's a relatively easy way to make some decent money, and I've done a lot worse for a lot less. I used to do a karaoke show at the local Sheraton hotel for these guys... It helped train me for my current position in my rock band.
Well, I'm actually a little tired of going through my work history here, and nobody really cares. Most jobs have been retail or retail related, though I actually did a mystery-diner/reviewer thing for about a year.
Anyway, the point is that I'm tired of these shitty jobs and want to do something respectable from here on out. I want to be able to talk about my job and my life with pride, not feel like I have to look away and defend where I am and how I got there. The time has come to get my shit together and try to be what I've always believed I can be. If I fail now, I guess I'll just have to resign myself to a life of mind-numbing mediocrity. Truthfully, I think I'd rather be dead, so I guess I'll have to just get my shit together and kick some fucking ass.
Don't try to stop me, or I'll knock you the fuck out.
Check back and see if I continue to do this... I might be as surprised as you.