I want to focus on writing. I want to focus on making my life something I smile about every day that I wake up. I want to feel a song in my heart and a bounce in my step as I go through my day. I want to pass my joy on, spread it around, infuse it into everything I do and touch. That is when I get there. When I get to the place where the joy which presently eludes me is mine, again.

I miss the person I can be when I'm joyful.

I was there as a teenager when I learned I was really good at competitive speech, when I found out I wasn't just good, I was GREAT. I remember excitement, anticipation, intensity, and joy. I remember the confidence I exuded during that period of my life, when I knew I was meant for something bigger than where I came from, when I knew I was going places.

When I was in the army, those people skills still served me well. Sure I was learning to defuse bombs, but it was in dealing with PEOPLE that I really excelled. Drill Sergeants actually liked me...I made it so. I knew how to TALK to them. I was in charge of my particular barracks area because the drill sergeant in charge of our platoon thought I could make the females "get along." It was a rough task I never quite mastered, but he liked me, anyway. I remember the joy I felt when I'd run down those stairs of the barracks where I lived. I recall the determination I felt when I went after those tests they gave us, when we couldn't miss more than two questions out of a hundred or we flunked...this was a bomb, after all. I remember learning to blow up munitions, setting the time fuse, watching it run down, the satisfaction when it worked exactly like it was supposed to.

Joy.

Then I went to Kansas after learning to defuse bombs, and the joy started to dissipate.

From the beginning I was not liked by the commander of my unit. I didn't know why, and I didn't know how to fix it which was a completely new situation for me. I began to feel deflated, then demoralized from the shoddy treatment I received. He punished me at every turn for the most minor of infractions. When I told him I was pregnant with my oldest daughter, he actually gave me an Article 15. Ostensibly it was because I'd been misleading about where I'd been going when I went to the doctor to confirm the pregnancy, which should have been wildly WRONG right there, wouldn't you think? I turned him into the the Inspector General on base who basically told me to suck it up and I was lucky he didn't try to kick me out. For WHAT, I asked. Being pregnant (and single)?? I was dismissed and given no opportunity to state any more about my case. I was so out of my element.

I transferred to a different unit where I was going to learn a different job involving downrange chemical warfare-that's right, never the conventional job for me-but I asked to be released after having Elizabeth. I needed to be her mother more than anything else, and even though my new unit was SO MUCH BETTER than the other one, I felt bruised by my military experience, which made me sad. I left EOD school with such high hopes, such joy....

But it was gone.

Did I allow someone else to take it? Did I allow life circumstances to steal it away from me?


Today before I left work, my friend who comes in to take the day shift told me that I really need to look hard for another job. She said she heard our heinous coworker and the front desk supervisor with their heads together, talking about me a couple of days ago. She heard that one of our new coworkers is being brought in during the heinous coworker's night shifts to train for the position. "I don't have a good feeling about this, Susan," my friend said.

I'm not sure how I feel. I've never been fired from a job, I don't plan for this one to be the first. And even though I so very heartily dislike some of the people I'm forced to work for right now, it's really hard for me to feel disliked. I guess it is for everyone, but I think I let it go too far.

I let these people steal my joy. No one should have that kind of power. No one else should be able to take from me what is rightfully mine.

I might need the job for financial purposes, but it's hard to think this job which pays pennies (okay, a couple of dollars) above minimum wage is irreplaceable. It's hard to think that I should continue on like I am, worried every day about people I don't like who don't like me.



About a month after I transferred to the new unit when I was in the army, the commander from my old unit walked in the door where I was working. At the time I was very pregnant and on desk duty. I smiled at him, asked how he was doing, told him to tell everyone else I said "hello." The best thing about the encounter was the look on his face. When he first saw me I think he was frightened, like I was going to burst into tears or point and yell or something. Instead I smiled enthusiastically and engaged him in social niceties. He didn't know what to make of it.

There was definitely joy that day.
 

I hate my job.

There. I said it. But I don't just hate it. I really, really detest it.

It's not the job, itself. For those who don't know, I earn a paycheck by standing at the front desk of a high rise downtown hotel. It's not a job which requires a college degree, a good thing since I don't have one. I have umpteen trillion college CREDITS but I have yet to take the required classes necessary to get that piece of paper in my hands. So I work at a job that doesn't require it. I still maintain the idea that it's a job I can perform while I pursue writing and chase the degree(s) I so desperately want.

This is not a good job in terms of pay-it's a mediocre-to-crummy job in that particular aspect. But honestly speaking I LOVE the guests. I live in a city where the majority who travel here are sick. They are worried, sad, anxious, scared, or simply resigned. They are mostly good people who need a kind face, some reassurance, and lots of directions. I don't mind providing any of it. In fact, I really enjoy it. Nothing makes me feel better than knowing I helped someone make their day even a little brighter, made the burden they carry just a tad bit lighter. I didn't start hotel career in this city, but every guest in every hotel has a story and they all need some reassurance, some kindness, and I have always felt great for providing it. I even like doing what it takes to make the hotel run, the computer and paper work. Even the math isn't too terrible, although once I worked for a hotel where they made us perform a MANUAL night audit even though the computer did one of its own. EEK!

Then there is this place. It's not the job. It's the atmosphere that permeates the building, the oppression I feel as the escalator glides me up and into the lobby which houses the front desk and back office where I spend eight hours a day, four to five days a week.

I've worked here almost two years. I came to this hotel after nine months at one and eight months at another. I'm notoriously "flaky" when it comes to employment; I needed to prove to myself and society at large that I had staying power, or such has been my thinking in the recent past. The owner is not a nice person. He's rich, of course, but this is not what makes him unsavory. He is cheap to the point of ridiculousness, refusing to put enough money into the property to make it as lucrative as it should be. He thinks people are interchangeable. By this I mean he thinks he can get rid of an accountant who's been here for thirty years and knows the property and its fiscal history like her own and replace her with some young person for half the pay and no benefits, expecting her to be just as good at the job. He thinks he can hire a warm body for the front desk and he/she will be as good as any other. He does not consider any one person on his staff to be valuable. He does not believe his staff are deserving of such common courtesies as days off and time-and-a-half on holidays. He grudgingly provides these things because his lawyer tells him he has to. Seriously. An owner like this with an office inside the back office, whose presence is a constant and tooth-grinding fact in this hotel (although he owns others) creates the worst kind of work environment where the employees are left to soak up all the dysfunction...

Change is the catch word we who work in this establishment get used to. I've been through two general managers and an interim where there was no manager, at all. Mr. Owner REALLY doesn't like paying them. Which is ironic since we now sport a new GM who, as far as I can tell, doesn't do anything. There is an assistant manager, one who used to work at the property until he was fired when this current owner bought the place, then rehired at half the pay. He is the grunt worker who is responsible for the lion's share of the work. This is true even though we now possess five new managers: the GM, the assistant, a "front desk supervisor", a restaurant manager, and a sales manager. There is also a "management consulting" team wandering around. We at the front desk are supposed to listen to all of them and do what we are told...by all of them.

The morale here has never been good, but in the last two months it's gone from bad to worse-than-bad. During the month of January one new manager a week was sprung on us; I never knew from one shift to another who was in charge and what was expected of me. We who have been here through several "changings of the guard" have been treated with a mixture of disdain and dislike, as if the reason this hotel hasn't succeeded in the past has something to do with us. It does not. It has EVERYTHING to do with the person who actually calls the shots. These new managers combined with new personnel who were "trained" to treat we "oldsters" with the same disdain...they're beginning to see it. And morale is plummeting to depths I've never seen.

In writing and then reading the words, is it any wonder my personal morale has sunk quite low in the last year? I've gained all kinds of weight, stopped writing, haven't done anything proactive for myself. I am angry at me for allowing was simply supposed to be a JOB to permeate every aspect of my psyche. First the owner and now the people I'm forced to deal with every day, these managers who look down their noses at me and make me feel small...I've allowed it all to define me.

I haven't written about the extent of my unhappiness with my employment for several reasons. First I thought I should "suck it up" and deal with it like an adult. People have rotten jobs and they make it through, why can't I? People deal with rotten bosses and bad situations and don't feel the need to run away, so why should I? And really, I could jeapordize my measly paycheck if I wrote about how I REALLY feel and some peon from work stumbled across it...??

I had an epiphany today. The bottom line remains that NOT writing about it and dealing with the emotional aspects of what I've gone through...that's just not me. Never will be. I have to write it before I can deal with it. I have to acknowledge that I am not one who is capable of shutting off emotions; I can't work in a negative environment for eight hours a day and come out of it without a scratch. Some people can, or at least with a minimum of scratches. But not me. Inside, since this job, I feel like I've been mauled by a bear.

And so the big picture: I HAVE to get the hell out of here!

That said, I have to be realistic, practical, and here is the flip side: I have to earn a paycheck for survival. I'm past forty and not in good shape health-wise. I'm obese with really, really bad knees, incapable of performing tasks I could have handled even a year ago, six months ago. There is no health insurance which nixes my ability to pay for what it would take to get me more viable on the job market. So here it goes...I'm going to have to call around and ask for help. I HATE that! I hate the idea of asking for charity, begging for something I never thought I'd have to beg for. At this point there is no alternative.

I'll have to suck it up and deal with it like an adult.






 

Yup, that's right. Here I am. I haven't posted a blog entry since the first week of December. Why the long hiatus? Was it famine? Pestilence? Was it about Unhappiness? Extreme depression? Was there a medical reason for my long and echoing silence from the blogging world?

Nope.

the only word I can find for it is "apathy." But it wasn't even that. I had ideas in my head almost every day for a blog topic. Quite often I even wrote it out in my head as I went through my day. I've done way too much "facebooking" lately, making it the place where I comment extensively and post my rabid and staunch belief systems, why I believe what I do...I haven't formulated my opinions as well as I'd like to though, which is why, all this time, I probably should have been blogging like a maniac, spending the time I was writing in MY HEAD putting it into written form. So why didn't I? Why didn't I get over here to this fabbo blog o' mine and get busy?? I really can't answer that because honestly, I have no idea. Maybe I wanted to experiment with how it would feel to go through my life with a lack of expressionism. It sucks, quite honestly. So I have no explanation for why it went on so long...other than inertia.

I have so many plans and ideas in my head. I want to create a political blog. I've wanted to for quite some time and I just haven't. I've wanted to get my rear end-along with my nimble fingers and moving brain-over to this site so I can read my friends' blogs, review, write, create, do the things that make me vibrant and keep my passion going. So there it is. Why? I have no answer for that question. *virtual shrug*

I saved some of my comments to controversial facebook postings. Sounds weird, doesn't it? But at the time it was where I was writing and expressing myself. I figure "what the heck?"

Most of what I'm posting here has to do with religion. In the U.S. we've been going through a firestorm over this, which actually stymies me. We are in the 2012. I thought we'd answered the question of "freedom of religion" over 200 years ago. But what do I know? I know I'm all for that separation. I know the only way to govern in a somewhat fair manner is to keep government and religious beliefs and practices separate from each other. It's only ONE of my many, many opinionated stands. There will be more. Oh SO much more...

This entire commenting "blog" of sorts was in response to a rather inflammatory picture posted by an administrator for a liberal facebook page I belong to. It was a slam on different kinds of religion;


Here's the thing: I don't mind if you're an athiest. That's your choice and this is a country based on the freedom to CHOOSE. I don't mind if you want to make cogent points about what led you to believe the way you do, you certainly have that right. But I don't think it has a place here, where it's supposed to be about helping Obama's fight to make this country become what it should be. It's not about making YOUR points concerning religion. It's the same principal as it would be if you were a Christian who used this page to promote your beliefs, or if you were a believer of anything else using this page in a way we didn't sign up for. People can become alienated from the central purpose of helping OBAMA if you insult and dismiss what they believe. You may not consider it insulting, but THEY may, and why go there in a place where we need to be cohesive? Use your OWN page to promote your own agenda. Simply my opinion.



It is a person's right to believe what they wish. At the same time, we also have the responsibility to respect the beliefs of others. I thought that's part of what we DON'T like about the right wing, their unwillingness to accept the rights of others to believe and practice whatever they choose. If you slam other religions or religion in general, what makes you any different?



Who said you can't mention being an Athiest? Go for it! You seem to keep missing my point. There is no problem with us talking about what we believe and why. That certainly doesn't mean anyone needs to SWAY anyone else, simply talking or writing about yourself will bring up your personal belief system. There's no way to avoid that and we SHOULDN'T. What we SHOULD do is RESPECT every single person's right to have those beliefs without belittling or insulting them. THAT is the crux of what "freedom of religion" is all about...the right to choose and the FREEDOM to express ourselves without fear of censure or insult. THAT is the ideal of a country where no one is right or wrong, where no one has the right to tell anyone else how to live or what to think. It's what we need to strive for as a nation.




What's horrific is the idea that you can FORCE someone to believe the way you do by imposing your own belief system upon them. Even Jesus says we must come to him of our own accord. Barring something you think is against God's law is not going to get your point across EVER. God said, "render unto Ceasar's what is Ceasar's. In other words, SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. It's the best idea EVER. If you are actually a Christian who wants what Christ wants, you will see the wisdom of this ideology. Not the Right Wing WRONG way, but the REAL way.



There you have it. Part one of an extensive fight that's been waged in this country...for the soul of it. I'm daunted but never will I give up what I know to be "the good fight." I'm going to use my words.