pk

2015 has already become interesting. Either from Job Search fatigue or just not giving a shit anymore about my situation (probably a mix of the two?) the day after I came back from Niagara Falls and simultaneously let go, I just sat on my ass. Then I was like, nah, I should put in a few resumes. I pulled up Kijiji like a lazy motherfucker and applied to a few places.

Got the big call within a few hours. I was offered an interview with a big cafeteria company as a career kind of thing. It was a really hardcore process and I honestly didn't think I got it, but just a few days ago I got the big call.

So it's great because I can eat lunch from any restaurant I like for free, I get benefits mandatorily and I'm doing a job (Tim Horton's again ugh) that I'm super familiar with. AND (!!!) it's full time 7:30am - 3:30am. So long as there isn't any coworker bullshit, which feels unlikely because UNION, it should play out well.

In fact, if I decide I still hate the hell out of Tim Horton's, I can just switch to another restaurant. If I decide I want to bail for Toronto, I can totally do that too in a few month's time. But that might be unlikely, considering I want to look into a downtown apartment.

But it was a long process. Since I didn't have my SIN card, but a tax statement from the Ontario government, Aramark decided it wasn't good enough and they wanted me to track down a Letter of Confirmation from Service Canada. So off I went, only to be told I needed my birth certificate. What the hell? Who the hell carries around their birth certificate with them? So after my dad having a meltdown a la "how the hell can you lose your birth certificate??", we went to a locksmith to get out my valuables from a safe, only for my birth card to be safely tucked in there. Talk about missing a bullet. The next morning, I went back to Service Canada at 9am... only to be stuck there for two more hours. And when I did get called in, it took all of 5 minutes. NOT EVEN. I was pretty miffed I waited that long for basically nothing! But the government dude did agree it was bizarre that my tax form didn't work since "it's legal proof of your SIN number and companies should accept it".

All that considered, I did get earplugs for my snoring shitty roommate. But at least she started paying me back ($480 so far, only $1000 left to go or so) and I've been hunting for a downtown account on and off.

So until then, I was basically sitting on my ass playing Persona Q and marathoning the shit out of Netflix. I finished a couple seasons of My Name is Earl, watched a bit of Kill La Kill on and off, a few comedy stand-ups (Aziz Ansari, Louie C.K., Kevin Hart), and finished most of the BBC show Sherlock.

Speaking of Sherlock, I was thinking about all those nutjob fans on Tumblr who called Sherlock an autistic robot and uninterested in sex (he is clearly neither), overly clingy of Watson (he wasn't THAT bad), and who the hell cares anyway, James Moriarty is still the only Sherlock character that matters.

Anyway, sorry I don't comment much these days. I just put things down on here then scamper away, but I try to make every effort to catch up when I can. I have to be up in about 4-5 hours, so lates!

Everything about my current situation is just bad.

As if failing my ass back out of school for the third time wasn't bad enough (AND IT'S NOT EVEN MY FAULT THIS TIME AROUND), now it looks like I might be given the slip at the end of December at my job as well.

Everyone who went to the sales induction (aka congrats u survived) got called up Sunday morning to get a big round of applause.

EXCEPT ME.

Let's talk about how this is shitty:
1) It's shitty if it's an oversight because THANKS A LOT, I DIDN'T NEED TO BE REMEMBERED OR ANYTHING. NOPE!!! I DON'T LIKE RECOGNITION WHERE IT'S DUE!!! *obvious bitterness*

2) If it wasn't a mistake, then it's still shitty because I'm not in the clear and they're still deciding about me. Which means they're stringing me along. Which equates into me also pulling FINE!!! ALL THOSE TIMES I ASKED IF I WAS GETTING THE BOOT AT THE END?? SO I COULD JOB HUNT IN DECEMBER? JUST FOR JOKES PEOPLE MOVE ALONG!! *obvious bitterness*

I pretended I had a case of the poops and ran to the bathroom to be upset by myself where no one could find me. Because I'm a big angsty baby I guess. But also because I've been seasonal and strung along so much the past year I am officially getting reall fucking tired of it.

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As for school I've been dragging myself along for it. But at this point I feel like I'm really drawing out the inevitable. I don't really wanna ~ make a dash to pass ~ at this point. I just want to do a makeup semester, smash that, then redo my fall semester (if I can).

If I get thrown out, I guess I tried.

Who got MS-DOS on her macbook?

THIS GIRL'S GOT MS-DOS ON HER MACBOOK.

I've been playing my old childhood favourite, One Must Fall: 2097, which is basically like a hardcore Pacific Rim where robots smash each other to bits. I never knew it was by Epic Games though! Now I know which company had Jazz Jackrabbit. Why, the people behind Gears of War, of course.

I got the hang of it pretty fast and I'm playing on the hardest difficulty level already. Surprised my hyper-competitive inner 8-year-old got the hang of it again so fast!

Now I just have to start rebuilding my entire MS-DOS game library.


In other news, I've been plagued pretty constantly with thoughts of dropping out. I thought talking to my prof who wanted to see me because the "faculty was concerned" would help de-stress my situation but in many ways he unintentionally made it worse. I was trying to say "I'm not a lazy student, I've just been plagued with non-stop money and eviction issues." which got the silent treatment, followed by "Well it's behind you now, so I'm just here to talk about the present."

But... it's not... behind me? ._.

I could see he really did not want to address any personal issues so I stopped trying to reason and he told me "You have to apply yourself more if you want to pass, and if you fail a core course, you're not coming back." and "You have lots of work ahead of you" and "Contact your profs right now to catch up"

What kind of fairy tale land do you live in? I felt mildly insulted but decided swallowing my pride was the only way to go. What did I have to gain by showing my personal displeasure?

Honestly, school has just been one giant haemorrhoid on my ass and I should probably just drop and try again next year. I mean, if they're gonna throw me out anyway...

It's just... after living in the Adult World for the past two years, it blows my mind how rigid the entire educational system is.

There's a lot of assignments that I have no way in hell of doing because it's group work and being excluded so often has started giving me anxiety. I wish there was more independent work.

Anyway I'm homework binging every day for the next few weeks until I can prove I deserve to pass with a 50%. I might just drop History since it's not a req (or plead about getting my mark to a 50), pull up my Business since she seems easy to appease, and hammer out theory, lighting, digital and print until it's all done.

Anyway, I guess I should stop playing DOS games and start sleeping around 9am. I hate waking up at 6am every single freaking day. I couldn't sleep in at all over the weekend because I had to go to a store at the opposite end of town. What the hell.

( About a TV )

In more negative news, I'm so behind on work this semester I am actually beginning to panic. It's a fuck cluster to catch back up, and I always feel so excluded and out of place in my classes. :( I think I might ask about making up next semester, if I can. I dunno, I'm just gonna hand in what's due and hope for the best at this point.

But in very positive news, I punched my way through all the other seasonal workers at my place and I'm officially in! Wow! I didn't think I'd really make it since I'm shy and quiet, but apparently I'm making the sales and I have the best customer satisfaction rating out of everyone in the store. So I was actually picked first, with the other guys behind me. Just... no one bothered to tell me officially? (☉൧ ಠ ꐦ) The only way I found out was accidentally running into one of the drunken managers at my work (he lives in the same apartment building) and asking if I should start looking again, but then after my co-worker bragged he was in, I was legitimately getting worried that it was the booze talking that night.

Either way, I finally landed in place where I don't get shit on over everything I do. Yay! I was getting really tired of being constantly put down for whatever reason.

Can I just say I'm sick of the coddling culture on Tumblr?

It's great to be so very proud of everyone and help people feel less sad and blah blah blah but sometimes it feels like it passes the line from supportive to just downright bizarre and apologetic.

Speaking as someone who has suffered heavy depression between the ages of 13 up until very recently at 25 (I'm doing a lot better now! Wahhheeeyyyy!), personally I always felt so offended if someone coddled me because who the fuck do you think you are to pretend to know what my problems are, you plebeian?!?!

Lately I'm reading posts that just fly me into a rage. It happens almost every time I attempt to read Tumblr, and then I disappear because of these terrible posts everyone loves.

The latest one was this gem:

posts saying that the symptoms of certain mental illnesses are not inherently abusive aren’t saying that people mentally ill people can never ever be abusive, they’re literally saying that those symptoms we have are not abusive and our mental illness doesn’t automatically make us abusive. if you honestly believe thats what we’re trying to get across, then you need to listen to us more

Which also to be a big part of everything wrong with these weepy 15-year-olds on Tumblr who don't even know how to use the word "literally". If a symptom of your mental illness is an uncontrollable urge to punch people, sure you may not be abusive at your core, but the end result is people are still getting punched, so the whole point is moot? It's abusive behaviour!

Honestly if someone came up to me and tried to feed me that pile of hooey in real life, I'd be sure I'm the one with an uncontrollable punching affliction. Let's just realize when we're being abusive and need help, we go get help?

Kids these days. *feebly waves cane*

I want to start posting more. I might just update to talk about vidya or shows, since those are taking up approximately 90% of my free time that doesn't include some photography work I've been doing.

Against the audiophile population of the world, I invested some money into a pair of refurbished Beats by Dre studio headphones. At $100 for a pair of $400 headphones, I was not going to shy away from it. I was never super impressed with the actual audio quality aside from some sick bass, but they always looked so nice aesthetically. And as ashamed as I am to admit it, I'm very into aesthetics. But I really like these ones because they're my first over-ear ones in a long time, and they're noise-cancelling! I feel like I'll be travelling with them.

I also bought a new toy, an Instamax Mini 8. I felt so thrilled to take polaroid-style photos since they fascinated me as a child and I always wanted a Polaroid when I was young. Turned out my work had an open box for half-price in the color I wanted, and I jumped on that. I've already burned through a pack noooo. I am going to be the friendly neighbourhood hipster taking polaroid photos of EVERYTHING then taking professional level photos of those because I want to reach the Ultimate Hipster status.

I also managed to watch It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia for the first time and... I really really liked it? I had a feeling it was up my alley, but I never got around to trying it, so when it was on TV I just had to. It also had likeable female characters. Big bonus! Meanwhile The Walking Dead went back to dead on my watching list (ahahahahaha) after attempting the latest episode. Has it essentially become a soap opera with zombies? Seriously? :(

I also polished off Attack on Titan in a day and I was actually fairly disappointed. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I felt like it never actually took off. No closure whatsoever. Like it was an overblown intro. I did really like Mikasa though, so I'm interested to see where it'll go in Season 2.

My roommate even has me watching American football. I guess I'm adding it under my belt along with soccer (regular football?), which I also enjoy a lot. I have no favourite teams, I just like seeing people wipe out.

In about a year I've become some kind of anime and TV savant. Gah! Hang out? Nah, I already have plans with my good friends Netflix and the TV!

In vidya news, I replayed Golden Sun: Dark Dawn and it wasn't as horrible as I remembered. Though I still think the whole "YOU MUST LIVE UP TO YOUR PARENT'S LEGEND!" shtick is just stupid. I don't think any reasonable parent would want to feed their kids to a giant bird monster.

I also just finished up Persona 4 Ultimax and I felt sad again beating the storyline and leaving behind my best friends Kanji, Junpei, Adachi-baby and all of them all over again. 8(

So now I'm playing the new Smash Bros. I am... relearning the controls for the 3DS? I am seriously not used to it. D: I think I'll be good again soon enough as my mains Marth, Ike and Little Mac, but it's a bit of a learning curve! Still very fun though!

Next purchase plans: Finally buy a guitar. I need a new hobby that isn't watching TV.

Who knew I'd be good at a job requiring me to be super social? This is all part of the recurring theme where I think I'm TERRIBLE AND A HALF at sales, but it turns out I'm actually the opposite.

I made two of the biggest plan sales in the store at the same time, and I was told I was doing the best in sales out of the new hirees because of this. One step closer to winning a new iPod touch! WOOP!

The only sucky part is when I'm being constantly hardballed, the butt of attempted scams and treated lesser because I'm a female working in a male dominated area. Like, wow?? Yesterday a lady came in asking if I could fix her camera, then demanded an exchange and... it turned out she didn't even buy it here. SMH.

And maybe one step closer to Not Getting Fired. I dunno, it's all so surprising when you consider how dumb, awkward and shy I can be! Here's to surviving past December!

So aside from doing super well at work, I'm actually SUPER AMPED for September.

REASONS:

- $7000 in OSAP
- $1000/monthly from work
- SCHOOL!!
- PHOTOGRAPHY!!
- BIRTHDAY!!
- FINALLY CAN BUY MYSELF FUN THINGS!!!
- I CAN AFFORD FOOD!!
- NO MORE DEBT!!! EXCEPT FROM THE GOVERNMENT!!
- Which can be paid off!!
- Roommate moving in!!

The only thing missing will be a social life, but it's not like I've really had one anyway lately.

Ahh... falling into the ever unpredictable trap that is cynicism. I keep bumbling around trying to keep up with the never-ending demands.

College pretty much forced $300 extra out of me at gunpoint, then slapped on a $100 late fee despite giving me an "extension" to pay. My mom said it was illegal of them to extort the money out of me, but I kept trying to tell her "rules are rules" and "if I don't pay this now, they will kick me out of this INCREDIBLY POPULAR PROGRAM". The initial two women were very nice and were willing to work stuff out with me. A positive first day of sorting my things out.

But all good things come to an end. The next day I was re-directed to the most humourless Stuffy Muffy worker I have ever met, though that didn't stop her from laughing once at my expense (thanks).

I tried to explain I was in a time of financial distress and the college was giving me an extension, and I finally returned with a little help from my parents. She asked me if I filled out the deferral form and when I thought she was giving it to me to fill out, she actually pulled it away from me without clarifying that she was going to fill it out herself. What gives? Anyway she filled it out, slapped on a $100 late fee (even though I paid the initial deferral fee ON TIME) and told me I owed a big fat amount when OSAP came in. She didn't give me the time of day, even.

I left so annoyed. How come such socially retarded people are allowed to work with the public? I thought the whole point of being granted extensions to pay was to NOT be slapped with late fees?

Anyway, I guess that's college for you!

I went to the welfare office and the lady there initially ripped me a new one too, practically over nothing, on top of making side remarks about some of my ID that were more or less none of her business (i.e. "My God! Your passport photo looks nothing like you!"). I fell behind submitting things so I'm assuming I got cut off. But I'm going to put in things on Monday anyway.

As for jobs, it's taken a twist for the positive.

I got a call back from Best Buy (BEST BUY! CHEAP ELECTRONICS!) and my friend talked to her manager at Target to see if she would hire me as a barista at Starbucks (she basically said yes, apply to the website, they'll have my name on the screen to get back to me ASAP).

So now it's some waiting, some more hitting the pavement, some call backs.

Bluesfest meanwhile is coming to a close. I wish we got better musicians, but I did get to see The Killers, Snoop Dogg, a great up-close view of Childish Gambino (yay for working in the Clubhouse!) and Adventure Club, amongst others.

I have also been working on my webdesign and Photoshop muscle again. I started up a Persona 3 fansite (MINATO!) with some encouragement and I hope the regular maintenance and creation of websites will let me make a kick-ass online portfolio. ONE CAN HOPE!

In the meantime, I guess I'll try to work my photography skills a little more. I've been feeling REALLY lacklustre at work lately, and I attribute it to a combination of artist block, stress and probably a little apathy.

I don't care for Photo Studio work, is kinda what I'm getting at. But if it pays the bills...

I was told to start my own company or buy a franchise. HARRRRF. I was thinking that too. Maybe later down the road.

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I HAVE ALSO BEEN WATCHING ANIME ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY which is really, really sad! Almost! If only it didn't make me feel so happy!

I binged my way through Devil Survivor, Summer Wars, Kinkenkreet or wtfever it's called, Wolf Children, Attack on Titan and Spring of Birth: P3 Movie. I am probably going to binge through the P4 animation, Kill La Kill, Magic Madoka and maybe Free! next. Though I'm not really into muscle dudes in speedos (I guess I'm gay).

Anyway if y'all have cool recommendations, or cool artsy anime films, I WANNA HEAR ABOUT IT. I am having the biggest animation boner for artsy anime films right now and I WANNA WATCH 'EM ALL.

I am also feeling Japanese pop music again. And I actually feel a small fire in me to fix up my Japanese. GOOD THING I'M BACK IN SCHOOL, RIGHT GUYS?!

I probably just managed to get myself fired from my temporary full-time job because I played hooky.

Jesus I sound really bad and irresponsible, but last week I gave it my 200% and since night shift managers are douchebags de la jerks, I got pulled aside and threatened to be fired over "working performance" due to my being "slow" and "holding back the team" and "if you want to still be employed, you'll improve this shift".

So because I didn't believe him (I usually finished EARLY), I went around asking a few other employees if I was genuinely frustrating to work with, and actually holding them back. They all said "Nope".

So I picked up the pace anyway because what can you do, but I don't think I've ever had a boss I liked less. At least at Independent our boss never hid the fact he was an asshole. This guy speaks like "OH ~ FOR THE TEAM ~" kind of leader cheese but in essence is a huge moron, a bully and a slight nutjob.

I have quietly watched from the aisles in between chores and boss man sucks back iced capps and plays on his laptop all shift whenever he's not marching around telling us what to do. So that was another bad mark in my book.

This is also the first place I've never been recognized for my ability to take initiative on chores, which is probably why (or at least a sign) they hate me so much in hindsight. And the fact I occasionally sass whenever they're up my grill for no reason. Plus all the talking behind my back and stuff amongst the ~ leaders ~, which I've heard. YUP, REAL TEAM WORK.

It's just such a huge damn shame because I really like the people I work with.

Anyway, I'm just taking my money and running at this point. I have it on plan to print out some resumes and drop off a few more. Good luck to me...

At least I have Kaze Tachinu to watch, groan.