on Starting Over
When I put my notice in at my job, I knew deep inside that somehow, someway that I would not make it to the end of that notice. Turns out I was absolutely correct about that. I didn't make it much longer than 48 hours. It was probably not the wisest financial decision, randomly cutting off income abruptly, but what that inadvertently did afford me was time to reflect on things. Truth be told, my mind has wandered into some pretty dark places the last eleven days. I was in a mental space where it was easy to second-guess everything I knew to be true in the world. There was even a twenty-four period where my mind couldn't let go of the idea of just getting into my car and driving until I ran out of gas and starting over wherever that may have been, Surrender Experiment style. Then fell into this mode of thinking that this is all happening for a reason, and that maybe I should only look for some sort of part-time work and focus all my real effort on photography. Then the reality of the situation sets in. Photography, really? One thinks their that good at photography that they could take up as their primary means of income. Fucking hilarious. I've only really been at it for less than a year. Maybe if I hadn't dropped the ball twenty years ago, like I have with so many other things in my life, and never gave up on photography in the first place this could be more a real possibility. A simply turn to my Mastodon feed is reassurance enough that I do not have what it takes to hang in the photography arena. I'm so pathetic sometimes. Right now I am being totally fucking pathetic.
pathetic inspiring mixed contempt and pity; "their efforts were pathetic"; "pitiable lack of character"; "pitiful exhibition of cowardice"
The negative energy that has been harboring inside of me that has lead me to leave my post of eight years and start from literally zero a completely new company has mostly left my system. Which is only half-true because I truly fear the next time I cross paths with almost anyone from the store. Hourly employees are one thing, I don't hold any resentment towards any of them. The same can't be said about my "brothers" in the Meat Department. The kids who stock the floor are no concern but the those bastards I spent years in the room with treating me like exiled member of a motorcycle club, to me, is fucking ridiculous. I bought these idiots birthday gifts, told some of them I love them, hugged some them before leaving work everyday. It all meant nothing. Nobody, not a single fucking person has reached out and this point it is safe to say that nobody will. People amaze me!
The upside of my new employment being "so far away" from home is nobody will really know me with the exception of any customers of mine who might have been far travelling to get to our store. I'm actually hoping there are quite a few of those people so I don't have to start with no customer base whatsoever. There are so many things that they do differently here at the new place, so I don't want to stand out in any negative way. I was very upfront with them when when I interviewed, and again when the staff running the Meat Department during my "test" that I was trained by my last employer in this trade and has zero experience prior. Meat is like slang in a way. Words mean different (sometimes WILDLY different) things depending where you are in the country and who you are talking to and where they got their training and all sorts of complicated things. In my experience, and trust me I don't have much, but I do have a very deep outsider perspective — but I think this is why butchers by in large have such a bad reputation. Butchers are like chefs in the way that confessing to not knowing something is not exactly a strong suit neither of these professions have. The difference with Butchers from what I've noticed is they are super defensive and very "territorial" about what they know. Unlike Chefs, they have zero interest in showing you anything or learning anything new from anyone. "Oh, you seen something on the Bearded Butchers YouTube channel?" Nobody cares. The guys who are willing to show you things are the what you would call the "old school" guys. There are not many of them left. I have only met two or three of them in my eight years. I've talked to people in other trades who say the same thing. It seems to be that old school guys are the ones who are willing to share information. I think this is because they know how screwed the future of a lot of these industries are if people don't start paying attention and retaining some of this information that can be passed down by way of word-of-mouth but can't be articulated in any text or YouTube video.