Another…

At yet another tomorrow, ready to buy myself a cake out of pride for my consistency. I’m doing this for myself and I once believed that was akin to a crime. I was supposed to give. I was supposed to do what other people wanted me to do, not what I wanted to do. I think early repudiations for when I did what I wanted to taught me to defer to those around me to avoid ridicule and judgment.

But continuing to contemplate my life so that I can map my way to where I want to go, I keep thinking about what influenced my early concepts of myself in this world. The reaction of the people around me to me certainly plays a large role in how I learned to view myself. There was outside representation. As a Black girl I look to Black women to help me predict my future. What could I be? I looked at the women around me to try to get some kind of notion of what my future could look like. What did it mean to be grown? What did it mean to take responsibility? What am I supposed to do? I just wanted to play, but I had to go to school. I just wanted to watch cartoons, but I had to do chores. It’s like as early as I can remember I had to do something that went against my natural compulsion. I wanted to have fun, I wanted to be happy, but the older I got, the more ridiculous that seemed. You want to get what you want? All of the time? You just think you’re supposed to always be happy? That’s childish.

Exactly! I was a child. I should have  been able to be childish. But I was a Black child. Black parents might play with you, but they don’t play. It’s very strict. It’s like constant anticipation of you being bad and a complete over-reaction to you doing things they didn’t approve of. You could break your leg and your parent would whoop you before they take you to the doctor. The pain of breaking a bone was not enough of a lesson. They had to put extra on it. Whatever they are mad at is a result of them being a parent. Kids are prone to accidents. In a world where you have what you need. If you had free healthcare you would not have to demand precariousness from your children because you can’t afford to take them to the doctor. A $50 co-pay is a lot when you are budgeted to the bone. That’s a tank of gas. That’s the stuff for spaghetti, some milk, maybe eggs, some bread and lunchmeat for sandwiches, that’s a lot to you. But it’s not a kid’s fault that it is so expensive to have children.

The point is, that I barely get up when I have to go to the bathroom. I am disconnect from my own needs and wants. I have so many reasons why there are other more important things. It took me like 2 years to get a new bed. I could have afforded that bed, but I didn’t think it was that big of a deal that I didn’t sleep comfortably at night. I could get to sleep eventually. Even if I never felt rested the next day. I was working 4 10 hour shifts. For 4 days a week, I slept, got up, got ready for work, drove the hour to work, worked my 10, drove the hour back, probably tried to eat something, definitely washed my ass, and then tried to sleep again. That was all I did for 4 out of my 7 days. And after a while, I really didn’t have 3 days off. 1 whole day had to go to errands. Did it necessarily take me a whole day to do errands, not if I could just do my errands, but it takes me a full day to do them. Honestly 2 days some times. I gotta do laundry. I gotta buy groceries. I gotta get gas. I gotta meal prep for the week. I gotta clean my apartment. I ain’t gon lie, I just used to be leaving shit everywhere throughout the week. Then I cleaned it up on the weekends. I cleaned my bathroom every weekend. I did my laundry maybe every two weeks. But I cooked every Sunday for the week because it was just easier for me to get up and heat stuff up than to worry about what I was going to eat every day. Still, that was my week. I tried to do something I wanted to do every now and again. I tried to hang out for birthdays and whatnot. But after a while, I had to gig on the weekends because my work check was not enough. So my life was all work. I would feel terrible and have to force myself to go to work. Even when I was off, I still had to make my own soup. That was the worst part of living alone. When you’re sick you have to take care of yourself. I don’t want to get up, but how else am I going to get juice and medicine? Those expensive ass apps, I would rather just get up and go myself. It’s relentless. I couldn’t afford to take a lot of vacations. It was just work and having barely enough time to recuperate before you have to go back. I worked in warehouses. My back and feet used to kill me. If you know someone who wears steel toes salute them. They are overworked and underpaid. That ain’t no hoe. Imagine picking big ass furniture items for 8 and a 15 minutes while you get 1 30 minute lunch and two 15s. There would be no work, but if we didn’t work we got scolded. We in that bitch sweeping and re-organizing and shit because animation is down so there’s nothing we can do. That takes a toll on your body. It takes a toll on you mentally too. I felt chewed up and spit out by that work.

So it brings me back to if I’m going to work hard I should love the work. Back when I was freelance writing full time and I would have to write 50 thousand word novels, that was a lot of work. Sometimes I would pull 10 hour days. At one point I was writing over 2 thousand words per hour. Then I was writing 80 thousand work novels. I was not making a whole lot of money. I think the most I maybe ever made doing continuous contracts as a freelance writer was maybe around 2 thousand dollars. It’s decent, but not really enough to live on your own. And it wasn’t guaranteed. They were all temporary contracts. If I didn’t get another contract soon after, I could go a month and only make a couple of hundred dollars. I was doing contracts for $45. Hell, sometimes $20. A whole lot of free work. That is the publishing industry. Especially writing. A whole lot of free work. A lot of exposure. A lot of internships. Plenty of commission royalty work, which is only good if it sales a lot. The point is that I’ve worked hard in different ways. I’ve picked over 1,000 articles in a night. I’m not talking about pencils. Some of it was light. Some of it was 50 lbs. Try picking 40 of something that is 50lbs. You can probably get it done quickly, but be tired to the bone. I used to be 3 and 4 pallets of 50 pound jack stands that I had to put on top of totes so they didn’t slip through the rollers. Yes, women did it too. We did all of the floors. Do that for a few hours and see if you don’t feel like you can lift a truck. They call it a free gym membership for a reason. I used to be dirty and sweaty. I actually found some satisfaction in manual labor. If I were paid more and treated with respect, I might’ve stuck with it, but even when I started doing computer worked, I felt belittled. Like upper management look down on you because you’re working in a warehouse. I had a guy outright ask me what I was doing there after I put together one of the most finely crafted emails they had likely ever seen. See operations was leaving behind things off of shipments and that was costing us big in our budget, so we had to find a ceremonious way of getting operations to recognize what could be done so that these errors didn’t continue. I didn’t talk down on anybody. I asked that we come together as a team and each do our part so that we can meet our goals. It hurt all of us to not have accurate shipments. We needed to stop prioritizing doing things fast and make sure things were being done correctly. I cannot tell you how much of leadership came to compliment me on that email. 

Again, my point is that you can find fulfillment in many ways, but even when you get a bonus for $3,000 you still spend your nights wishing you were writing. Maladaptive daydreaming of a life where you can just write and have what you need. I’m not greedy. I don’t need a ton. I just want to be able to live somewhere safe and comfortable, have all my basic needs met, write, travel, and really experience the good things that life has to offer. I’ll work, but I don’t want to have to work all of the time. I don’t want to have to choose between having my needs met and having my wants met. There are people in this world disappointed because they made less billions last year. They still made billions, but not as many billions. They want to make trillions. So the people who want to make a living wage are greedy and the people who want to make all of the money in the world while doing none of the real work are totally reasonable? I have to do more when people who have done far less than me don’t have a care in the world. I am not talking about the people who don’t have anything. I’m talking about people who have it all. They’re not greedy but I am? I am a hater. That’s what people seem to believe. I just want to get adequate rest, good quality food, and laughter. I want to have fun. I want to be able to enjoy life. It’s frustrating to try to find balance especially when far less worthy people don’t have to make these compromises.

I avoid bitterness by telling myself it is not yet done. I am still alive.  The future is not looking good, but it’s not decided. I can still be happy and live out a remarkable purpose. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll thoughtfully drink a hot chocolate with some kind of irish cream liqueur and see if I can find my way back to think these things through some more…