One More Down · 5:24am Feb 20th, 2017
My birthday is in a couple of days.
For the first time, I asked if I could take the day off from work. I haven't done that for my birthday since I got my first job in 2007. It's never really mattered to me, and truthfully it still doesn't. At this point in my life, a birthday is just another day. Of course, the fact that I've voluntarily kept my schedule open for my past birthdays has probably contributed to that view. How can a birthday be special if I allow myself to treat it like a typical work day?
However, even though I made my request, I will still be working this coming Wednesday. Needing to work doesn't bug me, but I find the timing of the whole thing to be a little curious. See, I need to work that day (and later today, and tomorrow, and for the last few days) because my boss had to take a last-minute flight across the country. He had a family emergency, one that evidently could lead to funeral plans in the coming weeks.
I don't mean to talk down on him at all, and I completely understand the situation. I'm more than happy to pick up the slack and pull a six-day week when things like this come up. Plus, he was respectful toward me when he told me the news, and has made plans to relieve me on the same day of his return.
Which begs the question: If all of this truly doesn't affect me, and if I understand everything, why am I constantly coming back to it? Why can't I get it out of my head?
I think it's part of the personal growth I've been doing since early last year, or hell, even two years ago when I was invalidated at my old job. In the time since then, I've been able to take a look at my priorities and see them...but I've also been able to see how I'm treated by peers and family members. Back then (and even still these days), I made myself a doormat. I allowed my peers and family members to take advantage of my nature, whether it was to pass up an opportunity, do a thankless favor, or have plans made for me without my input. In short, I realized how much control of my own life I didn't have.
So, in the time since then, I've been making an honest effort to gain some of that control. Adults call this "responsibility," and it sucks. Nonetheless, it has led to a much clearer view of my own life. Like I said in my last blog, I don't think I'm at a point where I can claim that I'm happy. However, I can definitely say that I'm happier than where I was a year ago, or two years ago, or any time in the last ten years.
Jesus.
Ten years since I got my first job?
Ten years without asking for, or getting, a day off for my own birthday?
I know now why this scheduling thing is on my mind so much. I'm still trying to find ways to get control of my own life, and taking a personal day off for a birthday is supposed to be the easiest thing to ask for. Yet in spite of my request, something came up that made it impossible. I'm not upset at the situation - to be upset would be an insult to my new work environment - but I just can't get over the irony of it.
I'm going to be twenty-seven. I'm no longer the doormat-y kid of seventeen when I was first hired. And I'm trying to get control of things. But still, even though I'm doing things well and in the right way, life itself found a way to take control from me.
I dunno. Honestly, it's not worth thinking too deeply about, and it won't make me lose any sleep or whatever. I guess I just want to be happy about something, and this damn situation keeps tugging at my mind. I need a distraction. Lemme find one...
This'll do.
I'm still plugging away at FMP, the new archetype study, and an old game that I love, but I probably won't be around to blog for a bit because work needs me. So I s'pose I'll see you guys after I turn twenty-seven.
...man, what can a twenty-seven-year-old even do? Is it fun?
~Leo
you have fun on your freetime