A Lamp Unto my Feet

I started working! for a t-shirt company! It's awesome and fun!

Okay, now that I've got that off my chest, I can tell you, faithful reader, about it. First off, allow me to clarify, this is my second part time job which brings me up to about 2/3 of a full time job. I host Quizo in Philly. Two Quizos, actually. One is at the New Deck Tavern in U City and the other is the absolute farthest away from New Deck as possible. The Victoria Freehouse on Front St. Luckily, they are on different days or I would probably just die.

Here's the thing you have to know. I love Quizo. I mean it. I really love Quizo. I love trivia. I love bars and spending time with people. Quizo combines all of those things but with the added benefit of always being right and getting paid for it. I look forward to my quizzing days like a child looks forward to Christmas. or Halloween because let's face it, Halloween is the shit. Hosting Quizo gives me the ability to pay most of my bills and live my daily life without collapsing into a jiggly weeping ball of gelatin at the vaguest mention of bills I owe or money or gas prices. And it's Quizo and my boss is awesome. I love it.

My boss must think I'm awesome too, because he now pays me to go to his warehouse and do worky things for his t-shirt biz too! Double the fun! This will either be the best job working for the coolest guy, or we will spend too much time together, freak out, and never speak again. However I think the later is highly unlikely. Mainly because bills. And I don't know what I would do without Quizo in my life.

I'll be brutally honest with you, everyone on the internet, I have been slipping into a depression the past few months and it sucks. Being unemployed makes me feel like an utterly useless human being. I'm fun! I have skills! I like people! Hire me dammit!

Unemployment is like a dark black oubliette that's cold and lonely and why get out of bed at the crack of mid-afternoon? No one loves me, I have no friends (even the sun left me!), I'm a burden to those around me, everyone in the western hemisphere thinks i'm useless and unskilled and I don't know, maybe they think I kick puppies. (Side note: I don't kick puppies.) 

My Oubliette

I'm sure that everyone hits a funk now and then, but this wasn't a funk. If you sit in that oubliette long enough, with all of the darkness in you written out on the walls in lights, it's all you can see. You start to believe it. Even now I don't believe it when someone tells me that I'm cool, or nice, or a good friend or, last week Ronan (my boss. bosses. new bff. whatever) told me that I am a likable person and that everybody likes me. Everybody likes me? No, Ronan's just messing with me. There's no way that people can think I'm a useful human being. They just don't know me well enough. It's insanity. No one can live like this. Not for an extended period of time. It will break your soul.

Having a job is like having Hoggle (Labyrinth reference) open the door at the bottom of that little room, call the sun over and allow the light to shine on your face. Why yes, I do have to wake up and get dressed today, I have to go to work. No, I can't stay out late tonight guys, I have work in the morning. I have a reason to wake up. I have a reason to leave the house. I feel appreciated and useful and skilled.
Having a job is like that.

So if you know someone who is going through a long-term unemployment, invite them out. Ask them over to watch movies or just hang out. There is nothing worse than felling like your friendship is a burden to someone and that's what not having a job feels like.
Hopefully and prayerfully, I will kick ass at this job and they will think I'm as awesome or awesomer that what they expected in hiring me and Everything else in my life will fall into place. Okay, that may be expecting a bit much from a part-time job, but I feel a change inside of me for the better.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. I'm no longer in an oubliette, but in a tunnel, and I can see the light now. and the way out.

It's a new year!

Wow. I can't believe January is almost over! 

It's been an eventful month, for me personally, and the City of Philadelphia as well. I started the year by going to the Mummer's Parade, both morning and evening, I started (temporarily) watching my cousin Ashley's boys full time, I have a new Quizo Trivia gig, I started going to (and plan on continuing to attend) a new church, and it's really starting to hit me that I need to start my new home search. 

There is so much that I want to get done before January is over, but it's moving so quickly! I started/continued to read 3 books this month, and if I want to stay on my goal of reading 24 books this year (only 2 books a month!), I'm going to need to finish any of them soon. 

My January/February Booklist

Also I promised myself that I would get more sleep, and have more regular sleep patterns this year. Yeah, that's not going well. Sleep is for the weak.

Ashley's kids are awesome. Jameson is 28 months and Shane is 16 months old. So they are exactly one year apart *not stressful at all*. Really, they are cool, but they drive me nutso. It's been so darn cold out in Philly this whole month that we haven't been able to go out and do anything. It sucks for them and then they drive me nuts. Add not getting any sleep on top of that and my days kind of suck. I will post tales of our adventures, once we have any. Other than indoor fun.

Firefighter Jameson

Doctor Shane

Quizo! I love quizo, I just wish that it didn't interfere with my sleep as much! Monday nights I host at the New Deck Tavern, Tuesday nights I play, Wednesday nights I host at the Victoria Freehouse, some sundays I play too. That means that three-four work nights I am staying out late and getting home later and still have to be up by 7am. I was so thankful for my snow day today. I slept until 2pm. Which, coincidentally, doesn't actually help regulate my sleep pattern. Womp womp womp.

Hmm, what else? Well, there is church. I started going to a new church, and it's not nearly as ethnically diverse as my old church but it's a bit more liberal and open. For instance, they accept openly gay members, which would have been hard at the church of old because practically everyone who attends there is a young married couple. Also, oddly, new church doesn't have a sermon per se on a regular Sunday. They have a reflection time. It takes a bit of getting used to but it's kind of nice to not be preached at. If there is anything I miss from OCMC it's having a sermon. On the other hand, no one is asking me to babysit, so that's a huge plus.

On the book front, and you should expect several more of these updates throughout the year, I started The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, and I am almost finished The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien, but I'm only 5 pages into Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman. Oh! and I still have about half of The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer. 

Currently Reading

Oh My God what is going on with this weather? Seriously, it's crazy. The polar vortex, or as I have taken to calling it, Polar Vortex Part 2: The Climate Strikes Back  has turned my little city into Hothadelphia. (That was a Star Wars reference, Amanda) I just went out and checked, there is 11" of fluffy white snow out there, and it looked like it was deeper out front. We went out to "play" in the snow this afternoon, which involved Brianna jumping around, laying, snow angeling, and trudging in the snow while Jen and I cleaned off our cars and shoveled the walk. News Flash: It's really COLD!!!

Snow Angels!

So I suppose that's it for what I'm up to, next post will be about something that is weighing on my heart, the utter rampage of violence in my city this month. It's really utterly insane. But more upsetting things are for a later date. So long, and have a safe stormy day!