holiday

So this is what it's like working full time at a retail store during the holidays. Shit's not so bad considering. Considering things could be worse. Still, it doesn't leave any room for much else. But the notion that this activity - work - is the main event of your day, that there really isn't anything else you're planning to do, makes the time go by a lot easier. I think the hardest part is the thing that is most unique to my situation: being uninsured and having an ear infection. But fuck it. I'm just going to fight through it. Not like I have much of a choice, anyway.

And in this particular workplace, this environment, being surrounded by a cast of people, both employees and customers, covering dots up and down the whole spectrum of all people, makes me feel like a quiet observer, objective in my witnessing of the events that unfold. There's a lot of shit talking, yes. A lot of rude customers, a lot of chit chat and gossip, and rumor spreading, and all this other bullshit. But somehow all of that is pretty tolerable, and for the most part, everyone is as well. I guess that just means I'm learning to be more patient or more forgiving. Either that or I'm caring less and less as I grow older, and I'm not quite sure if that's a good thing.

I think the most frustrating part is my particular qualms about this season and how it always seems to bring feelings of loneliness and disillusionment. I'm hardly ever surprised anymore at anything that happens during this time of year. The tidings of the the season seems like a ruse that all of us become involved in. We perpetuate it and impose it on one another - this sense of urgency and obligation to be a certain way with each other, do certain things, largely of course, to buy useless shit as a means of showing our appreciation for one another. And all these things we do we try to pass off as having been done with sincere intentions, but really, it's difficult to draw the distinction for what motivates our actions. It just comes with the territory, I suppose.

But with all that said, I will still be very happy when X-Mas arrives and I won't have to work anymore. Not on that day. And I will spend it drinking beer, watching basketball, eating good food, opening presents, and relishing in the warmth and effervescent dysfunction of my family.