emergence

I work shift work, like so many people do. Twelve hour shifts, four of them from 7 am to 7 pm then four days off, then four nights of 7 pm to 7 am, then four more days off (though I work a lot of overtime). Since it's an eight-day cycle, actual Saturday-Sunday weekends wax and wane like the moon. When they come I have to sort of teach myself how to be a social being again. It's an effort.

Last night was the last of the Wednesday nights I'll have free for awhile, so it was necessary to insert my stubborn, unresponsive ego into Karaoke night at RATT, the campus bar my girlfriend works at sometimes. It's a cheap drunk so it's tough not to go. The previous Wednesday was a fucking kick, and I met some fine people and I wasn't completely reserved and withdrawn - success. Last night, not so much. Luckily I'm a damn good singer, so I have that going as a lubricant. Still it was kind of like crank-starting an old Massey-Ferguson in the cold. Or trying to get into a moving car.

The other thing that's sort of been holding me back socially is the yawning monster of overdraft that sits where my bank account should have been for about the past year. Last spring I quit work to take my teaching practicum (which, by the way, was a retching disaster - I'll get into that some other time), and I tried to do it without a student loan. It takes a long time to dig yourself out of holes like that. I was only without a job for three months, but I still haven't clawed back much ground. It's a drag not being able to go to see a band you'd love to see because you just can't afford it. I try to keep up at least a thrift-shop level of moderately excellent fashionableness, but my underwear drawer looks like the wartime rationings of some leprous Latin American village.

It's still as bad as me sitting here on my ass right now, waiting for midnight to roll around so my paycheque is debited. I am skunk poor. Africa poor. I don't even have any beer in the fridge.