After nearly six months of this blog being relatively dormant, I’m happy to announce that I’m back! And a LOT has happened!
To be fair, I didn’t quite expect my hiatus from journaling here to last this long. My last post in late October mentioned that I was growing busier between work at my retail job, which was ramping up for the impending holiday season, and the academic school year had started for me at the University of Kansas. I had gotten so busy that I even put my live-streaming and content-creation hobby on hold and I was just hunkering down in fear of experiencing my first Black Friday and final exams at my new “real” school. But then after the holidays, and 2024 got underway, I started to really feel burnt out. In a lot of different ways.
I felt like all of my days off were spent doing schoolwork. I never felt like I had ample time to actually rest or relax or, one might even say, recover from what was becoming pretty grueling work for a retail giant. Not to mention, while I was able to convince them to schedule me for evening shifts only, my days off were frequently scattered and never the same week in or week out. While I thought I would eventually get accustomed to all the walking and standing that I was doing after eight or nine years of office work sitting down in front of a computer, I never really did. My feet and legs would sometimes throb in pain so much that it was hard to go to sleep at night. I was basically popping ibuprofen or acetaminophen like candy to mitigate all the soreness and even then I was still practically hobbling out to the car after my shifts. Then came one fateful day last month when I actually passed out while on the clock. We’re still kind of unsure what happened there, but the best educated guess is that my blood sugar had dipped too low since I hadn’t eaten anything that day. When I passed out, I bumped my head on a counter behind the service desk which caused my head to ache for a few good days afterward. To be completely blunt: That incident scared the crap out of me. I was starting to feel my mortality because nothing like that had ever happened to me before and I didn’t ever really consider that things like that could happen to me. Also, what if it happened again? If I fell and hit my head harder next time, I could be in real danger or even die!
On top of just feeling like the job was affecting my physical health, it has absolutely taken a toll mentally as well. I try my best to remain friendly and in good spirits. I generally get along with most people and I loved almost all of my co-workers. But the entitlement, attitude, and downright shitty and trashy behavior from customers and even some employees from other areas of the store were too much for me to bear at times and affirmed for me why I consider myself such an introvert. Then, over the incredibly busy and difficult Easter weekend, my manager who had done a lot for me, unexpectedly resigned. Then came several instances where I was expected to handle responsibilities that I personally felt were above my pay grade. And then there was talk that our team leads were planning on trying to transfer out of the department or be promoted further into management as well. It finally just felt like the last straw, so I also made the decision to walk away.
A few weeks have gone by since leaving that position. I’m not getting the physical movement of walking between 10,000 and 16,000 steps every night anymore, so my blood sugars have increased again and I need to start figuring out how to manage those since I once again find myself without medical insurance. But all of the pain and soreness in my feet has finally started to go away. I’ve been back to the store as a customer a few times, and seeing my old co-workers simultaneously makes me happy and a little bit sad. Being on the outside looking in is sometimes a little bittersweet. Especially since these were really the first few friends that I made here in Kansas outside of my family that already lived here. But what I don’t miss is the rest of the garbage that I put up with for ten months with relatively little in return. Please remember that corporations do not care about you! Don’t place working hard at a low-paying job over your physical health or happiness. It will ultimately never be worth it.
Finding a new job is also a little hellacious. I’m trying to refocus my efforts on finding office or clerical work again rather than just settling for the first employment opportunity that comes my way. Living in a much less populated area than where I came from makes that difficult to achieve locally, so hopefully I can find something that I can do from home. Please keep your fingers crossed and feel free to send me any potential leads either via email, commenting below, or direct message on your platform of preference!
My time as a student has not been going great either, but that’s a story for another post at a later date.
Until next time…