Hello world. How are you doing? It seems like the world has changed so much since even the last post early this month about the novel Three Body Problem. I was reading a lot of novels nonstop. In fact, this year, since January, I've read 25 novels. In addition, I've started using ChatGPT consistently. I try not to use it as a crutch for writing and/or actual ideas I have but rather as a sort of backup/double check on certain things.
For example, today my friend came over and was having an issue connecting his laptop to the internet web browser, and I asked it a few questions about possible fixes and troubleshooting. I also use it for questions about novels and albums of particular jazz artists and Zappa albums. It's gotten to the point where I'm using it more than google, which is downright fascinating but I'm aware that I'm becoming attached to it a bit too much. For example, I wouldn't want to use ChatGPT to write this blog post. That would be a bridge too far.
Moving on, what I'm mainly posting about today is more about a change of seasons. I moved on from my retail grocery job of twelve years and am now working at a thrift shop. It's not a glamorous job but it is a big change and there is room for advancement into management in the future. Pay is what the market will bear but the hours are reasonable and usually I get home around 9 pm. That is a huge plus for me because at the grocery job I was working till 1 am nearly every night for twelve years. So there's some good change here.
In addition, the place is small, only has a few employees [but will be hiring more soon], and you answer to one main manager, and another bigger manager above him. My coworkers are very nice and they've done their best to train me my first two weeks so far. There's still certain things I need to go over and really get down better but overall I really like the work. There's a cashiering element to the job but it's not as intense as grocery store cashiering. There's a daily nightly report that gets emailed to the bigger manager that I have to learn to write faster and get down better. But overall, it's a job, with opportunities for advancement, and because it's not a glamorous job, I think there's safety there.
Also, I think I lucked out with this job because right now the job market is cooked, as Gen Z says. There was a report in the nytimes about how this past month, in New York there was only 1,000 jobs added, which is insane, because I think there are more people in New York than in LA, so we're probably not doing too well with adding and filling jobs in LA either.
Moving on, I got laid off from my grocery store job back in January, around the beginning of that month. Keep in mind that I didn't quit or want to leave. They sort of forced me out, a sort of forced being laid off. So I've been unemployed for seven months. It was a rough period. I would say it was second worst time of my entire life. I went through a lot of severe depression and had constant nightmares. For about three of those months I could barely get out of bed.
My daily routine consisted of getting up as early as I could, cleaning up, looking/applying to jobs online, going to places in person and handing out my resume and asking if they're hiring [which most managers didn't really appreciate], and getting tons of rejection emails. Out of about 65 jobs, [15-20 of them being the same job applied to more than once over a period of a couple months], I got four job interviews, went to three of them, and got the fourth one at this thrift store. Don't get me wrong, I wanted to stay in retail grocery because that's my primary job experience but it just didn't work out. In fact, the first three interviews were all at grocery stores, and I think I would've been a bit happier at a grocery store but again, it didn't work out. So this is the next step going forwards.
Lastly, as the job market, economy, government, immigration system, and healthcare system collapse all around me, all I have to say is that as bad as those seven months being unemployed were, it actual wasn't as bad as it could've been. I had some savings to buy food and live on. I've spent a lot of money on that and want to replenish some of my savings with this new job. But more importantly than saving money or having money, I think right now just having a job is more important than ever.
I don't want to be all about doom and gloom but the system is collapsing. It has been for a while but most people are in denial about it and the government/news never say that we're in a bad depression right now. I think its a lot worse than it looks. There was a shooting at a Catholic school yesterday that ended with the loss of two young lives, that shook the nation. I don't think it will get better and I don't think there will be gun reform as a result of this incident.
In the worst of my moments being unemployed I seriously thought about giving up my groovy lifestyle in California to go back to the Midwest and live with my Mom, and help her out, especially now that she's getting older. With the way things are going for me here, I still might do that in the end. I've found that people I knew and know here in California were nice people at the time and we might have been friends for a while, but not every friendship lasts. I happen to think that the friends I made out here in California are much more narcissistic than my friends from the Midwest. Not only friends but a lot of managers at the retail grocery job were narcissistic as well. It kind of makes you wonder if there's something in the air here in California?
Watch this space.
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